


With Apologies to Mom, God, and a Bunch of Other People I Never Met

by Draikinator



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Codependency, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Night Terrors, Possession, Post Game, Post-Pacifist Route, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reader Is Frisk, Second Person, post soulless pacifist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-17
Updated: 2015-11-17
Packaged: 2018-05-02 00:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5227658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Oh, who am I kidding, he hated you anyway, didn't he? Of course you weren't friends. No one makes friends with people like us, Frisky, unless they want something. And you just give him what he wants, don't you? All you have to do is not kill everyone and he'll pretend he cares about you. Isn't that fair, Frisk? Isn't that good enough, Frisk? Isn't that all you deserve, Frisk?"</p><p>You stand up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Apologies to Mom, God, and a Bunch of Other People I Never Met

**Author's Note:**

> hello i have diagnosed ptsd so everything here is kind of vaguely from experience and is definitely not like, admirable character behaviour and all that. proceed for long, cathartic ptsd frisk and sans with nasty codependent shit trying to deal with a world where things genuinely are okay, only they still aren't, and they're trying to catch up.

You have night terrors when you sleep, of your hands sifting through piles of dust and your cheeks sore from smiling. You have a knife jammed into the waistline of your pants and the world is as empty as you are. Between dreams Chara whispers into your soul, begging for life, for mercy. _Please, Frisk, I only want to live, I only want to exist a few more moments, please Frisk, just let me borrow your body for a moment, long enough to try Momma’s pie again, long enough to tell her I’m sorry, please Frisk, have mercy, please._

You wake up mashing fight like always, but you’ve nerfed your atk as much as humanly possible and you just jab your fists uselessly into his ribs, damageless and weak, knuckles still scabbed over from the last time you slept alone.

He wakes up too, at your touch, and just as violently as you, and you’re nearly hard pressed to tug your knees and tumble backwards out of the way of the bones that slam into the mattress and rip through the sheets like wet paper. Your first thought, irrationally, is that you’ll need to buy new sheets again, and then you’re kneeling on the floor, and you’ve made eye contact and he’s half off the bed, reaching for you, one skeleton arm outstretched and fingers clenched and twitching around shimmering blue wisps of soul magic, and you can feel it on your throat, barely restrained, tight against your jugular.

You’re both panting and you sit like that for several seconds, staring at his one flickering pupil before he comes back into himself and his eyes return to their usual reassuring white pinpricks and his hand collapses.

You crawl back onto the beaten-to-death mattress, that isn’t even in a frame or on a box spring and is just sort of sitting on the floor, shoved into a corner because they never last long, and you go through the script.

“It’s November seventh,” you say, “we’ve been above ground for five years now, and everyone is alive. Papyrus is downstairs in the other bedroom. This is your house. I’m not going to reset.”

“your name is frisk,” he sighs and clings to you, digging his fingers into the back of your jacket, the one Momma keeps telling you to stop sleeping in, and you bury your face in the front of his shirt, breathing in the coal-and-sugar scent of magic and scrunching your eyes shut, “you’ve never killed anyone in this timeline. you did everything right, and chara can’t have you.”

You curl into him like a shield and you can feel his weird irrelevant skeleton breath on your hairline, “and i don’t hate you,” he finishes. You let yourself breathe normally, finally.

“I’m never going to reset again,” you whisper, and your mouth is buried in fabric so he probably didn’t hear you, but it’s part of the script so he knows what you said and finally, finally, he goes slack, like, actually slack, not the fake kind he pretends is real, like you can’t feel the tension and fear quivering in his marrow this close.

You’re never this bad in the daytime. With the sun on your skin you can forget so easily about Chara and the things they did with your hands to the people you loved, to yourself. The world is soft, and dark, and that clinging darkness settles into the less resolved parts of your tired soul and makes you remember. You never sleep well.

Neither does Sans, but you sleep better at Momma’s house. You’re pretty sure he sleeps better alone, too, with less screaming and trying to kill eachother, but you also know that when you sleep at Momma’s house and you wake up sobbing that fear doesn’t go away. It stays there all day behind your ribs, choking your heart and your soul and your voice and too many days of that and the old itch from before you ever saw Mount Ebott to let the world keep going without you returns and you need, need to do this. You need to be reminded by someone who understands in the real, painful, visceral way, what you’re really afraid of. Momma doesn’t understand.

You wish she did, though. You know she thinks that Sans is taking advantage of you or that you’re doing bad stuff that a fifteen year old shouldn’t be doing yet, but you don’t want to tell her you aren’t because you don’t want to acknowledge it at all. You don’t want to have that conversation and you don’t want to explain why you do this. You don’t want to tell her you know what her dust looks like on your shoes. You can’t. You won’t. She wouldn’t understand. You don’t want her to understand, not really. You don’t want her to hurt like you and Sans do.

You breathe evenly and with each shuddering sigh the fear leaves you and the assurance of reality fills you again, soft and familiar. You fall back asleep pressed against his ribs and hope that maybe someday you won’t need this, but you do right now, so you’re glad you have it.

* * *

 

  
The walk to the bus stop is brisk and cool in the autumn afternoon, the dew frosted onto the grass that crinkles like wet glass under your shoes. You turn sixteen soon and Papyrus promised to show you how to drive, and you’ve been looking at cars on the internet lately. Momma and Asgore and Undyne said that they would all pitch in to help you afford whatever you picked, even though your ambassadorial position did actually pay pretty well. Alphys even said she’s upgrade it to make it look really cool, and you aren’t sure you want something really flashy, maybe a minivan so you don’t have to worry about Asgore’s horns, but you appreciate the offer.

You’re looking at pictures on your phone when you step onto the crosswalk, and you don’t notice the blue 2004 Cavalier (you recognize it from Kelly Blue Book, because you’d liked the gas mileage and price point on it and seriously considered it or it’s following models) until it’s too late, and you’re halfway into the southbound lane, and it’s going way too fast, and you see the bus stop sign, green and white on the other side of the street and the startled head jerks of a couple on the other side of the street when the Cavalier’s tires scream against the pavement, and then it hits you.

Your soul bursts on impact.

* * *

 

You’ve loaded your save files twice before after you escaped the Underground with your little found family. The first time you could almost play off as selfless; an embarrassment in a political discussion you didn’t really understand when you made a suggestion you don’t even remember, that ended proceedings. You’d loaded your save from that morning and done it again, but better, and things had been fine. Sans didn’t speak for you for two days and just when you were ready to break down crying and beg for his forgiveness, he’d shown up at Momma’s door with a copy of Groundhog Day and a smile and insisted on a mini family movie night. He hadn’t said anything about what happened, but the message came across clearly.

The second time you have no defense for, because it was _cruel_. You don’t like to think about it, but it was the last time. Sans had met some girl on the internet and genuinely seemed to like her, and when she’d come over to visit you’d been ousted from the house and had to stay at Momma’s. You woke up after a night terror with the memory of his blood on your hands and you were so angry, _so angry_ , that you loaded your save file from a week prior.

You’d come into yourself in Momma’s house and for one triumphant moment felt a sick sense of resentful, hateful pride, like he had _deserved_ that, and then the guilt came washing over you. You spent the next ten minutes bent over the toilet puking your guilt and your guts out until you heard his sneakers on the stairs and not his slippers and you knew you’d fucked up, and when the door slammed open he was pissed like you’d only seen in other lives.

You looked at him, pathetically, sobbing into your toilet in the middle of the night, with puke in your hair and he’d softened in a way you didn’t even realize he could, and you’d both spent the rest of the night on your bathroom floor. He held your hair out of your face while you finished emptying yourself and you said you were sorry, once, and only once, and he’s said he knew, and in the morning he went downstairs to help Momma make pancakes while you took a shower and tried to scrub the guilt and self hatred from your skin until it was as red as your soul, but it was still there.

You come back into yourself under the sun, the feeling of warmth on your hair and a blue, cloudless sky smiling down at you. You’re not sure where you are for a moment, and then you realize it, looking around at the white plastic folding tables on the sidewalk, covered in snail pies and burgers made of glitter and water sausages that this was the fifth annual Reemergence Day celebration- you had saved almost by accident, when you saw everyone having such a good time and thought that you’d wanted to save this moment forever.

Mettaton’s group is playing something you vaguely remember on the stage at the end of the field, and Shyren’s voice is floating over the crowd of minglers, and Momma and 01 are clapping while Alphys and Undyne try to perform some ridiculous dance in the grass, but Alphys isn’t very coordinated, and Undyne keeps sneaking kisses that throw her feet off measure, and you can’t quite remember where Sans is, but you can still feel the way the impact crumpled your bones like toothpicks under your skin, and-

There’s a clatter and a murmur behind you and you turn, jerkily, confused still, and there he is. Standing under one of the food tents, his hands fisting at his sides with little jerks of blue energy you recognize, a half full paper plate toppled by his feet. He’s staring at you with murder in his eye socket and people are staring. You can’t even bring yourself to move, skeleton locking up inside of you, but he stomps over with barely restrained fury in his eye and grabs you by the hand. People stare when he practically drags you into the parking lot and out of line of sight of the party, but no one follows.

“what. did. you. _do_?” He hisses, dropping your hand and clenching his own back into a taut fist. You can practically hear the grief and panic in this voice and you hate that you’ve done this to him, again. You promised. You promised.

“I’m sorry-” you stammer, unable to make eye contact, “I didn’t- it was- I wasn’t paying attention-”

“you reset by _accident_?” He scoffs, and he looks so mad. You never get to see him this mad. Not in this life.

“No! Yes. I didn’t _reset_ ,” you say, and look at your hands. They’re clean, the skin unbroken, “I think- think I- I think I _died_ ,” you say, not even sure. He freezes.

“oh,” he says, “oh. _oh._ shit.”

“No, no-” you say, when his shoulders sag and his eyes fade back to normal, “No, I- I’m sorry, I wasn’t- I didn’t- I loaded before I even knew what I was doing, just- I know I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry- I know- I know we aren’t friends, I didn’t mean to, Sans, I-”

You’re both the same height, so when he lets his weight go and slumps back to the ground you follow him, desperate and afraid he won’t speak to you anymore, and then you’re both sitting on warm asphalt, foreheads pressed together. He’s shaking.

“shit. of _course_ you think that,” he whispers, “kiddo, no, we- we are friends. i shouldn’t have gotten so mad.”

“I promised,” you say, and you can feel the tears behind your eyes, but they won’t come, “I promised.”

“yeah, i know,” he says, kneading his fingers on the ground. You can hear the dull scrape of the bone on it and wonder if it hurts. “it was an accident. it’s okay.”

You shiver there for a minute until you hear footsteps coming and lean back, wiping your nose. He moves his hands into his lap and pretends to play with his phone until they pass, and then pushes himself to his feet and offers you a hand to stand up. You take it.

“Let’s go get some of those apostrophe dogs, alright, bud?” He says, and you nod, silently, pathetically. Momma can tell you’re upset when you get back, but you can’t tell her why.

You stay at Momma’s that night and she seems pleased. It’s been awhile since you slept in your own bed and you forget how comfortable it was- a soft mattress with fancy sheets and a real comforter- one of those memory foam pillows you liked and everything. It’s covered in stuffed animals Momma bought you and you scoot them over gently, because there’s a lot and you don’t want to knock them off the bed, but you need to get under the covers.

You cling to your pillow and shiver in the darkness despite the comfortable warmth of a summer evening and when your phone buzzes on the nightstand you want to ignore it, but you can’t.

 _you coming_ , it says, from Sans. You want to say no, but you can’t. You cling to your phone and try to sleep, but it buzzes again ten minutes later, _im not mad_. He is, though, you know it. Of course he’s mad. Why wouldn’t he be? Why _shouldn’t_ he be? And even still, he’s trying to appease you, showing you that same begrudging kindness he always does, because he knows you can ruin his life, he knows you can kill him and everyone and you can send them all back Underground on a moment’s fleeting, childish whim.

He’s afraid of you.

And god, why shouldn’t he be. You really are a monster, in every definition the word had before you actually met a monster. God, you’re worse than a monster. You’re human.

Your phone buzzes again and you turn it off and shove it off the side of the bed, smashing your face into your pillow and trying to withhold the sob that’s choking your throat, because you’re too old to cry over this.

 _No,_ says the voice in your head that hates you, _answer it, go over there, maybe tonight’s the night he wakes up and kills you, and wouldn’t that be fair!_

Your stomach hurts and so do your eyes and you can’t breathe through your nose anymore, it’s so stuffy. You shake and shiver into the pillow and try and block out the voice that’s growing in volume in the back of your mind. _Go kill him and load your save,_ it says _, maybe then he’ll understand why you did and won’t resent you for it! Oh, who am I kidding, he hated you anyway, didn’t he? Of course you weren’t friends. No one makes friends with people like us, Frisky, unless they want something. And you just give him what he wants, don’t you? All you have to do is not kill everyone and he’ll pretend he cares about you. Isn’t that_ fair, _Frisk? Isn’t that_ good enough, _Frisk? Isn’t that all you_ deserve, _Frisk?_

You stand up.

You slip on your boots. You head downstairs. Momma’s sitting at her desk, finishing the last of her lesson plans for the upcoming semester in September, and she looks up at you through her reading glasses when you pad down the carpeted stairs and onto the hardwood foyer floor.

“Frisk, my child, are you alright?” She says, and you know she knows you’re not.

“I’m going to Sans’s,” you say, and you can see how it hurts her. You don’t know what else to say. You hate lying to her. She stands and comes to hug you.

“Okay, Frisk,” she says, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Momma,” you say, and wrap your arms around her warm, fuzzy neck. She pulls away first.

“Do you want a ride?” She asks, but she knows the answer.

“No,” you say, “It’s only a ten minute walk. I could use the air.”

“Okay…” She says, and opens the door for you. The stars are shining, “Be safe, my child.”

You step out into the night and head towards Sans’s house, and when you’ve turned the corner out of line of sight with Momma’s house and you know she can’t see you through the window anymore, you turn and head the opposite direction. You pass the bus stop and shiver, but don’t stop there.

You walk until Chara grows tired and quiet, and you’re standing on the overlook of a mountain that isn’t Mount Ebott. It’s one of those little viewing pull offs on the side of the road- it’s the first one on this road, an hour hike from your house at the suburbanized base of the range. It’s beautiful, if the lowest stop. The cliff drop on the side is steep, and high, and rocky, though, and it’s always made you nervous because of the flimsy wooden railing that Sans likes to lean on to look out at the view.

You lean on one of the posts and look down at the potential fall. It’s pretty high, and you’re pretty sure it would be fatal, but you’ve survived some weird stuff, so you aren’t sure. You sit back on the bench by the right hand parking spot where the hiking trail entrance is and are annoyed by the dampness of it, early morning dew clinging to the wood already.

You look away from the view of the range and up at the starfield overhead, unmarred by light pollution. It never ceases to wind you with its vastness.

You think about how sad everyone would be if you died and try to let that convince you this is a bad idea, because you know it would be bad.  
Momma would be devastated. Alphys was never good at handling grief. Maybe even your bio parents would care.

The image is so tainted, though, by the knowledge that you’re ruining their lives with your existence. You can’t stop resetting even though you want to. You don’t want to die, so you don’t. Maybe eventually everyone you love will be like Sans- they’ll start to remember, more than they already do, and they’ll wake up screaming and crying in the night, afraid to be alone, afraid to be near anyone, afraid.

You’re not even sure where you’ll go when you die. Chara clearly didn’t go much of anywhere, considering they were screaming in the back of your mind to give up and let them have atry if you didn’t want to live so badly, and you wonder briefly if you and Chara will go to the same place, or if Chara was even Chara, or a memory, or you, or something else. You almost want to do it just to see what happens, where you’ll go.

You curl up on the bench and tuck your hood over your head, curling your elbow under your temple and closing your eyes. You’ll sleep on it.

* * *

 

There’s light filtering through the open windows of the hall, and you can hear birds and breeze outside. It’s a beautiful day, and he’s there, too. He’s going to kill you. You know he is. You want him dead. Well, maybe it’s not that you want him dead so much as you want a fight to the death with him, because he’s the most fun you’ve ever had. There’s dust in your hair and hate in your heart.

He moves first, a flurry of bones and blasts that you dodge with practiced motions, like a dance you’ve done a hundred times. You have, at least. He’s not happy, despite his unmoving grin. Violence follows his hands and his eyes and you dance just ahead of it, between pillars of light and stone, like you could do this forever. He’s getting tired.

He offers you a hug and you tighten your fingers around your old knife and it’s comfortable in your hand, and when you topple off the bench and onto the soft earth below you’re gasping for air, clawing at the dirt against the screaming in your head, louder than usual, angrier than usual, far more desperate than usual. It takes you several minutes to make it quiet again.

When you finally sit up, patting dirt out of your jacket, you look out on the view. It’s just past dawn now, and the sky is creamsicle orange-pink, a dull mist over the mountain range. You watch it for a moment, then climb back onto the bench and take off your shoes, setting them underneath it carefully.

You step up to the wooden barrier and take a deep breath of clean mountain air. It’s crisp, even in August, and you can taste morning dew and distant fire. You slip over the top of the fencing and stand on the cliff’s edge, toes curling against the grass in your socks.

If you don’t want to die, you won’t. You know from experience. But if you’re determined, determined to vanquish the last remaining threat to your friend’s happiness and lives, then you can. You know it. You can feel it in your soul as surely as you can hear Chara’s screaming over the rustle of trees below. You take a long, deep breath. Today was not a good day, but things had been good, overall. You got more out of life than you had ever really expected- a real, loving family and good friends, and maybe that would be enough, and that would be okay.

You close your eyes. It’s okay. This is okay. You’re okay.

“frisk!”

You jerk suddenly at the unexpected shout and spin- he’s there, staring at you in abject horror, his usual bony grin replaced by an atypical frown, the closest to sad or scared he usually ever gets, face-wise, and he’s snapped an arm towards you even from yards away, like he’s going to grab you with magic, but he’s startled you and you slip backwards over the edge, soft blue just above you, grasping at nothing.

You tip over the side and your last thought is that you have to explain, before your soul bursts.

* * *

 

You fall into yourself with sun on your skin and music in the air. You know where you are this time and you don’t need to orient to turn and find Sans.

He’s dropped his plate again, but this time he looks terrified of you instead of mad. You can see his hands shaking from here, and people are staring again. You take a step back, and then another, and then you’re running. You make it back to the parking lot before he grabs you from behind and crushes you against his chest. He must have taken a shortcut to overtake you- you kick your legs and struggle but he just clings tighter and you don’t relax until you hear him sniffling.

“kid-” he says, when you calm down, “what the fuck?”

You can feel yourself shaking but you can’t turn around and you can’t make words the way you want to, and the only thing that comes out when you open your mouth is “ _I’m sorry_.”

He hugs you tighter and your hands go white knuckled against the radius of his forearm through his shirt, and you just keep saying it, even though you don’t want to. You can’t say anything else. You can’t think of anything else to say.

When you clearly aren’t going to calm down he scoops you up like he did when you were little and clung to everyone like a stressed out koala and you bury your face in his shoulder and shiver against unwilled apologies and tears that will not come and he carries you through a familiar shortcut home. His home. Home. You feel better in the torn mattress and unwashed sheets, bafflingly and you hate that you do and when you’re too exhausted to keep clinging you go slack against his ribs, still hiccuping broken breaths like a kid again.

“why?” He asks, but you can’t look up at him.

“I’m sorry,” you say again.

“i called tori to ask if you were okay when i didn’t hear from you,” his voice is quivering, “she said you came to my place, and i- jesus christ kid, i just knew, and, uh, i couldn’t find you, no matter where i looked- we called everyone, everyone- and i thought- i thought i was too late and then- and then i was, i-”

He’s shaking as hard as you were. You fucked up.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

“what were you _thinking_?” He says and tugs your face up to look at him. Your mouth opens and you don’t think anything is going to come out but it does.

“I thought,” you say hoarsely, “I thought if I was dead, I wouldn’t be a threat anymore- I couldn’t- ever be tempted to- to reset- I just- I love everyone so much and what if I- There’s- I thought, if I just stop, right now, then I won’t ever have the chance, and no one will have to be afraid of me anymore, and-”

The look of horror that crosses his face stills you in your tirade.

“you really don’t think we’re friends, do you?” He says, so quietly you almost don’t make it out. You can’t even bring yourself to shake your head so you just shove your face back in his chest.

“I know you’re afraid of me,” you say, “I know that’s why you let me come over here even though you can’t stand the sight of me. I know who you see when you wake up and I’m here and I know you hate it,” you stammer, “I know you just want to keep me happy because you know what I can do to you if I’m not and I- I can’t live like this, I can’t be that, I don’t want to be the bad guy you’re afraid of, I can’t- I can’t- I can’t-”

“i’m sorry,” he says, eventually. You tighten your grip on the fabric. “i’m not good at a lot of stuff, kid. not at science, not at being a brother, or a friend, or a responsible adult, or-” he goes silent for a moment. “not at much other than fucking shit up, i guess.”

“You only swear this much when you’re mad,” you say, without really thinking and he titters with an unexpected chuckle

“yeah. not at you.”

You don’t say anything for a moment, but you don’t feel as bad as you did earlier, at least. “ _Are_ you? Afraid of me, I mean.”

He considers it for a very real moment. You appreciate it- you want an honest answer, not hollow, well-meaning reassurance.

“yes,” he says, finally, “but i’d rather sit through a hundred more timelines than ever have to see you do that again. please don’t do that again.”

“I won’t.”

“i never meant to make you think that- that i only care about you because i think i have to, or something. you’re family, kiddo, genuinely. you think you’re the only one that scares me? i’ve seen undyne skewer you like fishsticks, i’ve seen asgore go god mode- hell, kiddo, i’ve seen timelines where you never even made it out of the ruins and i knew what they were, i knew what had happened, i’m not stupid, i-” he paused, and frowned, and held up his bony hands in front of him. “i’m always afraid i’m going to wake up one day and you won’t move fast enough and i’ll get a friendly reminder what colour human blood is. i don’t want that. i’m afraid of that.”

You don’t really know what to say to that, so you don’t say anything, but you sigh into his shirt and you can feel your breath pass through his ribs.

“I won’t do it again,” you say after the silence starts to hurt.

“thanks.”

“So what now?” You ask, “Do we just go back to, whatever? Night terrors and trying to kill each other in our sleep?”

“maybe you should try sleeping in tori’s house again. i mean, uh, baby steps and all, i don’t mean cold turkey or whatever, but maybe it should be a goal. get away from whatever codependent self destructive shit this is,” he says with a hand wave, and you nod, “you got my number. just call me when chara wakes you up.”

You nod a little more assuredly at that, because it does sound good. A goal to work towards sounds good.

“and i’ll try to be less hard on you over loads, okay? it’s- it’s not as big a deal as i make it. i want us to power through the bad shit, all of us, but death is- another ballpark. graveyard. whatever.”

You laugh at his half-assed attempt at a joke even though it doesn’t even make sense and it’s not really even funny, and realize you’ve stopped crying. Your eyes are dry.

“we are friends, kid. we’re _family_. end of story. i’m glad i know you, resets or no. i was glad to know you even before i knew you were the anomaly, aight?”

You nod, and sigh, tired, but feeling better.

“on that note- if you want, you can load up that save from earlier, and we can go back and enjoy the party like we did the first time, huh?”

You wonder for a moment if this is some kind of test that you can fail, but you take a deep breath, and nod one last time. “Countdown from ten, okay?”

You look up and his smile’s genuine for once, and you take a deep breath and access the menu in your head. he counts down slowly, and when he hits one you close your eyes and load your game.


End file.
